Common Files and Directories

$HOME/.login

Read by c-shells on startup. e.g. to replace a login tch by bash, put this at the end of your .login


    exec bash

$HOME/.profile

Read by Bourne shells on startup. Put "global" variables in here

$HOME/.emacs

Read by emacs on startup. Common place to put emacs configuration commands

$HOME/.forward

Mail forwarding file. Any mail sent to your account on this machine can be forwarded elsewhere. Can also be used to filter spam mail.

/

Top-level directory, root of directory tree

/bin

Most common commands

/usr/bin

Additional common commands

/dev

Directory of all known devices. e.g. tty* (terminals), sound, fd* (floppy disk), etc

/etc

Administrative files

/home

User directories

/etc/passwd

The password file, readable by all. Many Unix's hide the actual password now in /etc/shadow which is only readable by root

/etc/hosts

List of hosts, avoids using nameserver to look them up

/etc/services

List of standard TCP and UDP services

/dev/null

Null device, used to discard output


expr 1 != 2 > /dev/null

Jan Newmarch
Last modified: Tue Mar 20 11:49:59 EST 2001